Some folks undergo life with certainty and goal, their upheavals mere blips within the grand scheme of issues. Others stay their lives searching for the identical certainty, solely to comprehend that they’ve been ants scurrying on a sidewalk all this time, mere fodder for an enormous outdated foot that has descended down upon them from out of nowhere. I lately got here to come across this massive outdated foot myself, and as tempting because it’s been to wallow within the “why?”, I discover it much more helpful to determine a means into the “how?”
A part of the “how?” A visit to America that I can now not afford! On the very least, I may gorge myself on fattening American meals, revel within the summertime bounty of Western tomatoes and corn, and ferment on overseas couches whereas watching heretofore-unheard-of actuality TV exhibits. There was additionally the lure of the Pine Tree State — I’m speaking about Maine, in fact — land of L.L. Bean, plentiful lobster, and improbably chilly lake water within the peak of summer time.
Power Maine summer-er Gen invited buddies Trude, Felice and me to an impeccably deliberate tour of what she known as the “three sides of Maine”: the “massive metropolis”, aka twee, charming Portland (what you’d get if Wes Anderson and a seagull had a child); the islands additional north alongside the coast near Acadia Nationwide Park; and the deep Northern woods near New Hampshire and Canada. After this, we’d know Maine in addition to anybody can presumably count on to, after solely per week there.
However first, Portland. As touristy as it’s, it additionally harbors (get that?) an excellent eating scene, stuffed with earnest waiters in suspenders and tasteful lighting with wood-burning ovens. After a lobster tour the place we snacked on an “afternoon tea” of $10 lobsters, we loved elaborate cocktails al fresco earlier than heading to Fore Avenue for dinner, when a sport of “fuck, marry, kill” over rice, pasta or bread grew to become unexpectedly heated. The following morning, we broke our fasts at a spot the place everybody in Portland, be they vacationer or native, inevitably finally ends up: Becky’s, dwelling of the lobster benedict and mammoth blueberry pancakes.
Subsequent cease, additional north alongside the coast, we loved but extra lobster close to Bar Harbour at Archie’s, the place my bank card was declined:
A lot is product of Maine lobster, however it’s in reality not hyperbole. Not like Canada’s try to assert maple syrup and Singapore’s try to assert all fried noodles ever made, Maine actually is awash in lobsters at summertime, when the water stays chilly (imagine me) and the rocky seabed and kelp preserve the crustaceans well-fed and hidden from would-be predators. Even higher, summertime is when these guys shed their regular carapaces for his or her model of “white summertime capris”, by which I imply bigger and softer shells, making them simpler to crack to benefit from the sweetness inside. We ate them with drawn butter, however the Thai seafood sauce I had introduced with me (Dek Somboon model) was too candy for my tastes.
That evening, as a substitute of having fun with our rented cabin’s fire-pit for which I risked my life by darting throughout a freeway for $5 firewood, we watched “Fifty Shades Darker”, a film that moved Trude to tears as a result of she “couldn’t imagine anybody would watch this unironically.” Evidently, we didn’t do justice to Acadia Nationwide Park.
On to the following cabin, this time in Rangeley, set subsequent to a glowing, clear lake carved out by a glacier hundreds of thousands of years in the past. We didn’t have wifi or tv. How did I survive, you ask? Nicely, I napped, loud night breathing my afternoons away whereas the others went paddle-boarding, fishing (I wasted $25 on getting a fishing license), and shriek-swimming, a novel means of navigating the icy waters and slippery rocks of Rangeley Lake.
We roasted lamb shanks and sausages, downed extra ridiculously candy corn, drank whisky like pirates and even made som tum out of a semi-green papaya obtained at Complete Meals. We cooked dwelling fries and extra pancakes for breakfast, dotted with an ample provide of the wild Maine blueberries which develop naturally within the mountains and are far sweeter than the blueberries present in Thai markets.
In the long run, did I overlook that I had been squashed by an nameless big foot from on excessive? No, in fact not. However I did take pleasure in some little bit of what should have served as ant heaven, at the very least earlier than returning as soon as extra to actuality again in Bangkok.
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